Video Cards Posts - Page 53

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), is filled to the brim with 28nm orders, and is now likely to expand the process capacity later in the year, according to industry sources, reports DigiTimes. The sources have said that TSMC is reportedly running at full capacity at its 12-inch fabs, due to strong orders for 28nm, as well as 40nm and 65-based designs.

TSMC, instead of having to avoid orders and lose sales to United Microelectronics (UMC) and Samsung Electronics, the company will have to speed up the pace of it's leading-edge capacity expansion in particular, its 28nm capacity, according to these sources. The sources have added that a number of fabless and IDM companies have approached UMC and Samsung regarding their capacity for 28nm processes, while finding out that TSMC is unable to satisfy their demand due to its tight supply.

The firm is expected to spend $6 billion on capex in 2012, revising previous numbers. TSMC also stated during their most recent investor meeting that 28nm process technology could account for 5-percent of total wafter revenues in Q1 2012, up from 2-percent in Q4 2011.

Today has been a video card news pot of gold. First we had the GTX 680 pictures, then the GTX 680 review, then the HD 7990 specifications, and now this. Swedish proverclocker Elmor managed this feat with a MSI R7970 Lightning card, which is a non-reference variant on the AMD HD 7970. So, for all of those people out there that thought MSI was making too big of a deal of its product design, maybe its time to think again. After all, look at what this card was capable of doing!

That picture isn't photoshopped. What you can see there is a MSI 7970 running with an 1800 MHz Core clock and with a 7.70 GHz Memory clock. It required 1.7v and liquid nitrogen to achieve. The massive clocks yielded a memory bandwidth of almost 370GB/s and a 3DMark 11 performance score of P15035. The rest of the test-bed consisted of an Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition six-core chip clocked at 5207 MHz, with 4 GB (4x 1 GB) DDR3 memory clocked at 2314 MHz, and MSI Big Bang XPower II motherboard.

Today has been a day strictly about video cards, or so it seems. We now have a good idea what AMD's upcoming 7990's specifications should amount to. We also know basically what the nVidia GTX 680 is capable of. So, AMD needs to fire back with something to top it. Well, they hope that the 7990 is just the thing. Unfortunately, it may also eclipse the nVidia 8800 Ultra as the most expensive graphics card ever to be released in the process.

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The rumored specifications of the HD 7990 will in essence be 2 x HD 7970 downclocked, Crossfire'd and cramped into a single GPU board. This means it will feature 48 CU covering 4096 SP and 256 TMU. It will have 6GB of total vRAM. It's clocks will be 850 MHz core and 5 GHz memory. An educated guess would place it at a TDP of ~375W and require two 8-pin power connectors. It is set to release in early April and regain the crown as the single fastest GPU. Well, at least until nVidia fires back with a dual-GK104 chip, possibly called the GTX 690.

Today has been a busy day regarding the upcoming nVidia GTX 680. A review of the card has been published on Tom's Hardware (since removed), even though the card hasn't even been launched. The card officially launches this Thursday, March 22nd. Take a look at its performance! Generally, it beats out the 7970, and comes close to the dual-chip cards of the previous generation, ie the GTX 590 and the 6990.

Additionally, the card had an overall lower draw the 7970, yet it still managed to beat it. It appears that nVidia has a winner here with Kepler. It even manages to beat the dual-chip cards in a few benchmarks! I can't wait to see the flagship version of Kepler, which has yet to be talked about. I think most gamers should be happy with the 680, however, since it is such a great card. But enough of my blab, I'm sure you would like to see the results!

That's right, you read the title right. We have in our digital possession 3 pictures of a yet unreleased retail Gigabyte GTX 680 graphics card. It would appear that Gigabyte has followed nVidia's reference board design for this card, opting to use the stock cooler. The only thing that is a visible change is the futuristic sci-fi art on the cooler shroud.

Earlier today we reported on another store listing the GTX 680 for sale. I commented on how, with all of these store postings, that the release of the GTX 680 must be coming soon. These pictures confirm just that. We have proof of a retail packaged GTX 680 meaning these are probably on the way to retail stores now. The first images of a retail GTX 680 have appeared online thanks to Overclock.net forum member "ironman86." They show that the card does in fact use two 6-pin power connectors. The source has promised us benchmarks, and we will try to get them posted as soon as he does. In the meantime, take a look at the rest of the pictures.

It seems like everyone is jumping the gun trying to sell a card that doesn't even technically exist yet. Yes, I know it will exist at some point, but until it's released, it doesn't exist as far as I am concerned. The latest posting comes in the form of two cards being listed for sale at $578.20 on NCIX.com. One card is by eVGA and one is by MSI.

With all of these slip ups, we have to be getting close to release date. We just have to be! The new postings don't really give us any sort of extra information that we don't already know, other than a possible selling price and what speed MSI's factory overclocked card is going to be running at. In case you're curious, that speed happens to be 1056Mhz. The MSI listing is here, and the eVGA listing is here.

A post over on Overclock3D.net has a surprise for ya'll. It's a picture of GIGABYTE's GEFORCE GTX 680 GPU, and while I'm excited to see what NVIDIA's latest Kepler 28nm-based GPU can do, the GIGABYTE card seems very reference. In a world where AMD allowed non-reference designs on their top-end GPUs, it's a bit saddening to see this.

The first picture is of the box, where it features the GIGABYTE robotic eye which looks cool, I always associate it with Transformers for some reason. We see that it sports 2048MB of GDDR5 RAM, and includes a 3-year warranty on the card, again, great work by GIGABYTE. We also see that it's based on PCI-Express 3.0 and includes support for DirectX 11, which is something that should be standard, and known by now.

Forget buying your GTX680 overseas, it's now available for order in the US priced only at $566.75. While we don't learn anything new from the product page, it almost certainly confirms that it's coming, and it's coming soon. The site is taking orders, so if you're interested in running SLI, now might be the best time to pick up 2 or even 3. That is, if your pocketbook can handle it.

You can view the product page here and check it out or even order some, as the orders are being taken "regardless of availability." If you do decide to purchase one, do you mind grabbing one for me?

GPU season, here we come! One of the first online store listings of NVIDIA's GEFORCE 680 is here, with the ZOTAC-branded card making an appearance on the Dutch-based online store, ComCom.nl. The card is priced at 426.20 excluding taxes, and 507.18 inclusive.

The store is accepting orders, with shipping dates between 2-5 weeks. There's no limit on how many you can purchase, so if you want to hit up the reported 3-way SLI maximum, get on it. While you're at it, I'll take three of them too, just because you love me. The ComCom listing actually lists some specs too:

Team Green haven't even started waving the winning flag from their upcoming GEFORCE GTX 680 (it still feels weird typing it in ALL CAPS), but AMD are beginning to knock at NVIDIA's wall, and the cracks are falling to the ground.

If we rummage through the cracks and debris on the ground, we'll find news of AMD's upcoming dual-GPU monster, Radeon HD 7990. The new card is codenamed New Zealand, and is set to launch shortly after NVIDIA plants their GEFORCE GTX 680 flag into the ground. It's rumored that AMD are awaiting final benchmarks of the GTX 680 before they launch its competition.

There's no set date, numbers or more details, except for 'it should be here in early-April'. You can be sure that NVIDIA isn't just sitting on their hands, and they should counter with a dual-GPU Kepler-based card. Oh boy, graphics wars are on again, peeps!